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I'm really curious to see the benchmark comparisons between the previous MacBook Air with the 1.8GHz dual core i5-3427U (Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz) and the new MBA with a 1.3GHz dual core i5-4250U (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz).

When my oldest needed a laptop right that minute for class after the old Dell gave up the ghost he went to two local stores, the Staples and Best buy. The Staples were doing nothing but bait and switch, every model he would look at on the floor was magically out of stock but they could get him 'something similar' for a $300 markup

I doubt Staples was trying to pull a bait and switch. This is probably what happened. Your "oldest" was only going to buy the laptop and nothing else, right? Well, since the profit margin on PCs is so slim, Staples has a program in place where each store is expected to average at least $200 in attachment sales with each PC sold otherwise the store gets in trouble with the district manager. They call this attachment sale total their "Market Basket" and it can consist of anything sold in the store (e.g. MS Office, antivirus software, extended warranty, laptop bag, printer, printer ink, paper, a pen, a candy bar, a soda,... etc.).

If the sales person sees that the customer isn't going to buy anything else with the PC (called a "dry sale"), then it's not uncommon for them to pretend that they don't have the PC (or other similarly priced PCs) in stock, especially if it's going to drop their weekly "Market Basket" average below $200 or drop their warranty sales percentage below 6 percent.

To avoid making the customer suspicious of anything, they'll sometimes tell the customer that a higher priced model (usually something not on sale) is available, but it's also a model that is more than what the customer is willing or planning to spend. The customer will then leave and go somewhere else. Yes, they lose a sale, but they also save their "Market Basket" and warranty sales numbers which can sometimes be more important if they don't want to get in trouble with the district or regional manager.

What I want to know is if I can resell the digital textbook once I'm done with it like with a paper-based textbook. It's one way to help offset the price of the next textbook I might buy, but knowing Apple probably not.

What happens to all the files that were stored on the servers? If you don't have a backup yourself, then you're SOL.

That's one reason why I refused to depend on cloud storage and keep a NAS. I keep telling friends who use their smartphones as their main PC, digital camera, etc to back the stuff up and not just to the cloud. If you don't, you might find yourself F'ed one day. But do they listen? Nope.

Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people proved to be interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."

the drum tuning application provided by Activision, which requires a 20 character code to install, only came with 19 characters.

Activision did, however, suggest a work-around. "To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to install the applicatin."